Green Deal

ajfowler

I had solar panels fitted under the green deal 12 months ago and my electricity bills have doubled. I have contacted the firm that installed them but they are not interested. How do I go about having them removed? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

spiro

Have you checked that your meter is not impacted when you are generating? So meters run backwards or potentially run faster when you are not using electricity but are generating. Did you advise your supplier that youhad panels Iinstalled?

ajfowler

Yes my energy supplier does know about the panels. As part of the green deal they have to add£1.01 per day to my bill. My meter is running as it should but it is the money that is added that doubles the bill. E.g. My energy used is £109.09 per quarter but the green deal adds £105.04 to my bill. My bills used to be around £123 per quarter now they are over £200 per quarter. Thanks for replying.

matelodave

Did you not realise that you'd have to pay for the solar panels then?. Surely although your leccy bill has increased, they should be offset to some extent by the FITs payments

I was never convinced that the Green Deal was good value for money. It struck me that you'd end up paying top price for the panels plus an inflated interest rate for the loan of the money so the payback period (if there was one) would be quite protracted.

If you are paying 1.01 a day = £370 a year you'd
have to get at least that in FIT's and lower grid electricity consumption to break even. I don't know whether the payments are fixed for the duration but it would take 20 years to pay back around £7k

Have you actually done the sums to see how you are doing re FIT payments, surplus fed back to the grid and optimisation of your consumption by using leccy when the suns shines

I'd doubt very much that you've got any grounds to have them removed unless they don't actually produce roughly the amount of electricity that they were predicted to. Even then there's no guarantees that the sun will shine or that trees wont grow and shadow them so I reckon you are lumbered.

macman

If you have the panels removed, you will still have to pay for them for the next 9 years to repay the loan.
Green Deal is a loan, not a grant!

Robin9

Some confusing figures here - energy £109.09 a quarter ; bills £123 a quarter.

On face value if they were £123 and you are now paying £200 of which the Green Deal repayment is £105 then your elec bill has reduced to £95 ie a saving of £28 a quarter ie about 25% .

ajfowler

I was obviously mis-sold the solar panels as I was told my bills would reduce. No mention was made of FIT. I have obviously been stitched up by the scheme.

matelodave

Do you not get FIT then?. If you borrow money generally you have to pay it back. The idea of the Green deal is to borrow money to pay for the "improvement" and the saving will pay it back over a period of time.

Perhaps you should be looking all your paperwork and find out exactly what you've bought into

macman

ajfowler wrote: »

I was obviously mis-sold the solar panels as I was told my bills would reduce. No mention was made of FIT. I have obviously been stitched up by the scheme.

No, you've obviously not understood what you signed up for. Your bills do not necessarily reduce, because the saving in consumption is supposed to equal the loan repayments which have been added to your bill.
On top of this, if your Green Deal includes solar PV, you should be registering for and getting FITS-which is down to you.
There's no way that having solar PV can increase your consumption, and a glance at your annual statement will confirm that, compared to the year prior.

Robin9

Just to confirm we are talking solar pv and not solar water ?

lstar337

Sounds like the OP didn't sign up for FIT!